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  ‘Yeah, he’s here.’ She clicks the TV on, restlessly, as if her hand needs something to do, while still drying her hair with the other hand.

  ‘JJ!’ she calls upstairs, and then, when there is no answer, with a mother’s commanding tones, ‘JJ! Get off your bed and come and see Bel!’

  ‘You keep him in order,’ I say, amused.

  ‘Someone has to, darling.’ She pours boiling water into the teapot. ‘So, I hear you lot had quite a time the other night.’

  I’m instantly alert, but I have to try not to show it. ‘Yeah, well, you know. We’re young, stupid and white.’

  ‘What?’ She glances up with a brief frown, as if I’ve said something strange that she can’t quite place.

  ‘Never mind. It’s a song.’ (By XC-NN. Damien played me it.)

  JJ shambles down, in a loosely-tucked-in check shirt, his hair frightened into a quiff, his eyes crumpled. He waves absently at me and collapses with a yawn into the armchair.

  ‘You just can’t get the staff, can you?’ I sigh to Imelda, grateful for the chance to slip out of this conversation about our activities the other night.

  She looks up from stirring the tea, and raises her eyebrows in a brief, arch way. It’s Imelda’s way of saying fnarr-fnarr, I think.

  *

  So we’re here up on Fallowdale. Drawn by something unknown. No, this isn’t the University of Life. It’s the down-market version. The University of Central Lifeshire, formerly Life Polytechnic.

  Well, you can stuff it, I think to myself. At this particular establishment, my year group is full of tossers. I can’t do my preferred course modules. And the catering, cleaning and accommodation all ‘suck dead bunnies’, as the Americans say.

  It’s inevitable, really – been happening for years, ever since Mrs T and her option-to-buy innovation. Less and less money coming into councils, no one really being bothered about keeping up repairs on no-go estates.

  And you know what else this brickwork world is full of? The bus-stops. The buck stops here at the bus-stops. Where the bus stops, life stops. Life banks up, like scummy algae. The specimens gather, gossip, shove, smoke and drink there. It’s as if the bus shelters, in their urine-pungency and their blood-and-bile technicolor graffiti, are nexus points where intensity of life burns through, searing them all and anyone nearby. You only have to watch to know this.

  You see, there’s a bus-stop just here, on the other side of the green, and there’s a collection of specimens there right now that proves my point.

  There’s Sad Old Bugger, tottering in ill-fitting clothes the colour of dung, with a face like a corpse under a flat cap that’s probably crusted on to his head.

  There’s Mrs Blobby, wire-haired and double-chinned, wobbling in a knobbled pink jumper and barrel-slacks. Say that word again and again, say it with venom – slacks – and spittle – slacks – and phlegm – slacks! It sticks in your throat after the third time, doesn’t it? A word that describes ruched old cloth round a putrid white belly. Describes a world slipping away. Describes a stumpy-toothed mouth dribbling over a jawbone.

  Slouched against the glass is Ms Grunge, hair knotted with coloured threads, big crunchy skirt over scuffed boots, Walkman welded to her ears.

  Standing behind is Miss Confection, a dolly-stick with yellow, scraped-back hair, striped tights, blue plastic belt clasped with a flower around a navy pencil-skirt. A small black vinyl rucksack is slung across her back, just big enough to hold a lipstick and a mirror, like some glossy insect slithering up towards her neck.

  ‘Half their life must be spent waiting for buses,’ I mutter.

  ‘Always waiting for the one that’s going to take them away from it all,’ suggests JJ. He doesn’t really say it to me, though; he’s absent, staring into the fluffy, open sky that you find this far above town. ‘You can understand why the place looks so beaten-up.’

  I can see the beginning of a familiar argument. I’ve never held with this stuff about poverty breeding crime, actually, and I don’t have any sympathy with people who are so frustrated that they trash their own neighbourhood. Pissing in your own back yard – that sort of thing just transcends mere stupidity.

  ‘If their lives are so shit,’ I mutter, ‘why don’t they do something about it, then?’

  JJ shrugs. ‘Maybe they can’t.’

  ‘Bollocks. Everyone can do something.’

  Across the way, Ms Grunge opens her mouth wide as if to yawn, leans forward slightly and projects a glistening arc of spittle through the air. It lands on the pavement. She licks her lips, closes her eyes and retreats back into her Walkman-world. Sad Old Bugger stares at her, his jaw working silently, while Mrs Blobby turns away in disgust. Miss Confection brings her watch up to her eye with a smart, robotic movement, drops her arm and resumes waiting.

  ‘Well, I’d never have had you down for an optimist. What’s this, a sudden new faith in humanity’s potential?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ I snap at him, pushing my hair back angrily. I glance at JJ and he’s smiling in a quiet, superior way. ‘Nobody needs to smash windows and nick things.’

  ‘Which we’ve never done, of course.’

  ‘That’s different. I don’t try and justify it.’ I feel smugly content with my answer, because it’s the best one I can think of, and I’ve been wanting to use it for a while.

  ‘No one tries to justify. Only to understand.’

  What is this? It sounds like he got that straight out of a book. Or else the Fally air must be addling his brain, turning him against me. What the hell does he mean, understand?

  ‘You can understand,’ JJ offers, ‘why people feel aggrieved at not having things, especially when it gets near Christmas and the shop-windows are full of stuff. All these glitzy stereos and TVs and things. Putting them in the windows just rubs it in the face of the people who can’t afford it.’

  I don’t believe I’m hearing any of this. ‘Oh, yeah, so it’s society’s fault for daring to advertise consumer goods. Brilliant, JJ. So we should all pretend to be fucking poor, so as not to piss off the underclass.’

  JJ’s argument is dangerous. You put the goods in the shop-window, so it’s your fault? Worryingly close to all that crap about rape and short skirts, in my opinion.

  If I don’t watch out, he’ll turn into one of these nannying types who spout neo-Marxist justification for crime. Why should I make allowances for someone who thinks he can walk off with electrical goods out of a shop-window, when I have to pay for mine? I mean, if I ever got caught, I’d be punished more heavily than him, on the grounds that he’s more ‘needy’. Yeah, like everyone needs a video-recorder to survive. One of life’s essentials.

  The bus scoops up the little crowd of losers. Ms Grunge slouches on. Miss Confection totters, picking her change from a prissy little purse. Mrs Blobby hoists herself up like a whale on a crane. Sad Old Bugger totters on last, and I see the bus move off as soon as he’s got his ticket. I snigger as he staggers.

  So here I am trying to articulate my anger to JJ. ‘If you’re poor enough to need to nick stuff, surely nicking food and clothes makes more sense? You’ve been doing the wrong sort of thinking.’

  He looks amused for a moment, but when he glances towards me, he seems more disgusted. He sighs and slips off the wall. ‘I’ve had enough of you, Bel. Let me know when you’re feeling less confrontational.’

  I can’t believe this. I hop off the wall and pursue him down the hill, but he’s walking on ahead, glancing just once over his shoulder.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I’m scurrying along to keep up with him. Fally houses scroll past, dirt-coloured, their different-coloured doors flicking up one after another like cursors on a screen. ‘What do you mean, I’m being confrontational?’

  ‘I don’t want –’

  ‘Look, I need to know!’

  ‘That old one again. Need to know. Yeah, yeah. Leave it, Bel.’

  We hurry round the corner. No sign of anyone else on the roundab
out, or in the street stretching out in front of us. Just gardens full of washing. People cower in their houses in Fallowdale. People hide.

  ‘I thought we had an understanding!’ I yell at him.

  ‘Did we? I thought we had a shag.’

  ‘But we’ve been having a laugh together!’ I’ve finally got in front of him, finally caught his eye, and I fling my arms out like some stupid scarecrow and he tries to dodge past me but he can’t. ‘So what’s the matter?’

  He sighs. He starts to say something, looks away, then opens his mouth again. He blinks quickly, eyelashes fluttering in that girlish way of his.

  ‘Go on!’ I can feel that we’re teetering on the edge here. It could go either way. I’ve got to pull it out of him.

  He folds his arms, kicks at the ground, meets my eye for a second then looks away. ‘I don’t care much for –’

  ‘Yes? Yes?’

  ‘For your contempt.’

  ‘My contempt?’ I frown, draw back from him. ‘You mean my natural wit and intellectual cynicism?’

  ‘No. No, I certainly don’t.’ He sighs, shakes his head. ‘Look . . . You’ve – we’ve – never lived like these people. Why do we talk about them in such a cavalier way? How can we know what it’s like to live like they do? How can we possibly know?’

  I shrug. ‘Do we want to?’

  He says, ‘It’s like with your dad.’

  I feel hot anger prickling my forehead. ‘What about him? Why do you need to bring him into this?’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t care, does he? Knocking down those flats.’

  Shit, have I been telling him about that? I suddenly realize quite how much you open yourself up to someone when you’re seeing them. How much ammunition you give. Like handing them a knife, and telling them to cut you. I’m going to have to be careful.

  ‘It’s for the best,’ I say guardedly. ‘The complex’ll bring employment to the area. Worth losing a few dodgy sixties high-rises for.’

  JJ, arms still folded defensively across his chest, shakes his head. ‘Did you hear him say that? I mean, do you know when the sixties were? We were born in the eighties, Bel. Get your head round that.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Thatcher’s bottled sperm. Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘I don’t like your attitude, Bel. I don’t like your mindset, your assumptions. All the things you get up to.’

  ‘On my own?’

  ‘All right. We. The things we get up to. It’s pointless. And it isn’t fair. It isn’t helpful, the way you talk about all these people.’

  ‘Helpful? JJ, what the hell have you been reading?’

  He doesn’t answer. He ducks round me and starts walking again. He leaves me standing there, uncertain as to whether to follow him.

  Those long, slim legs are striding back down the hill towards town and he isn’t looking back any more.

  I stand there, hands on hips, and watch him until he’s just a speck in the distance.

  Chapter Eighteen – Insurance

  JJ has not called. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.

  It’s a place for endings, this town at the end of the world. People think they come here for new beginnings, but no, they find closure, completion, even death sometimes. It’s that whole thing about there being nowhere to go. When you get to the edge of a cliff, the only way is down.

  I don’t know how I ever imagined anything could start here, in this desolate place.

  Funny how people get together by mutual assent, but when they split up it’s almost always at the wishes of one or other of them. Not both. It’s like losing your job. I’m going to go to the library one day and see if there have been any sociological studies done on the similarities. They have a similar crashing, disruptive effect on your life.

  The only difference is that with a job, you normally get some notice. That would be good, actually. Notice. Pack your bags, I’m dumping you in two months. I’m giving you that time to get your life together and find someone new, all right?

  But no. You’re out on your ear that very day. And there’s no such thing as Emotional Income Support.

  *

  Part of me says: wise up, get real, the world is never going to end unless you really want the world to end.

  Part of me says: but I just want to know where he is, and where things began to go wrong.

  When you’re at school – doing, say, English A level, like I was – you’re in the incredible position of having some older woman or guy take you aside every few weeks and say: yeah, this is good, a B-plus, I’d say, but it could be an A-minus if you’d tighten up your argument just here, look, where there’s all that waffle, and use a few more pertinent examples just here. In other words, someone tells you exactly how you could do better.

  Life needs grades. Life needs a pigeon-hole where you hand in your essay every two weeks and get told just exactly how much of a waste of space you are. Because then, at least, you know, don’t you? Reports on life, to take home. ‘Bel has done quite well in the past year, although a neo-religious mutilation fixation and the haunting guilt of violent crime are combining to produce adverse effects in other areas of her life. She would do well to maximize her interpersonal relationship strategies, and to GET A CLUE. C-plus.’

  *

  So now it’s dusk, and I’m on the cliffs.

  I had to get out of the house, because it was just starting to get to me far too much.

  I told that bitch Kate, though. I told her. Shit, I wish my dad would divorce her and find someone vaguely human, someone who’d let him be himself, and not try to have any say over me, none whatsoever.

  It was just an hour ago, like this.

  *

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says my dad, shaking his head as he examines his tax return at the dining-room table. ‘I’ve just about written off as much as I can. What else can I put on there?’ He taps his teeth with a Biro, the end tapering and chewed – like the mountain-shapes those people in Close Encounters are all making, or a recently sucked stick of Brighton rock.

  Ever since the law was changed on tax self-assessment, Jon’s been slightly dislocated. A bit like when you never quite catch up from that lost hour after putting the clocks on. He had it sussed for April – all the cashflow neatly trimmed to his best advantage, and just the right number of trips to conferences that he could get away with.

  He took me to one last year, an Independent Redevelopers’ convention in a hotel in Bath, just so that he could count me as an observer and claim for my train fare and expenses too. In the car, he told me gleefully to drink as much as I wanted, because it was all going on the account. After that, it all seemed pretty bloody pointless. I don’t like it when Jon sanctions things, tries to be liberal and cool. Sometimes I wish he was a reactionary old fart like other people’s dads.

  Anyway, it was a neat town – better than this dump, I thought. I spent a morning strolling around, looking at Georgian crescents, furrowing through musty bookshops. At lunchtime, back at the hotel, most of the delegates were ploughing into the bar, carrying off gleaming pint trophies as they yapped and pointed at one another like schoolchildren. I escaped to McDonald’s at tea-time, and just as it was starting to get dark, I hung around a pub off the main street and leant against the bar, sizing up the guys who approached me, telling each and every one to get lost, until the right one came along. Suede coat, loose checked shirt, earring – in other words, he looked the part for getting me some gear. And I was right. I spent quite a good night in Bath after that, in a sea of light and darkness, wrapped in techno, jostled by bodies of varying ages and genders. I learnt nothing about Independent Redevelopment. However, I found out at breakfast that my dad didn’t, either. Also, he was so gloriously hung-over – while I was fresh-scrubbed, gleaming and straight – that we had to leave the car and take the train home. So much for the great alcohol-versus-drugs debate.

  ‘Can you think of anything else tax-deductible, Bel?’ He dangles his glasses from his hand and sucks thought
fully on the earpiece.

  I’m slumped on the sofa, hopping through the satellite channels. ‘Stationery. You always forget to put down stationery for invoices.’

  He shakes his head in despair. ‘No, no, I’ve written all that off. Think of something else. Remember, Bel.’ He points his glasses at me, and I know what’s coming. ‘First food . . .’

  ‘Then morality!’ I cap the quote with a brief, affectionate grin at him.

  I like doing this – one of the rare events in the year which unites us. It’s better than Christmas, in a way, because rather than both having paid ridiculous amounts for things that neither of you wants, you’re conspiring to get more money out of the system. And this year, it serves an extra purpose – it helps me to forget my screwed-up life.

  Every year since they started the business together in 1988, my dad, who studied economics, has done the accounts himself. All the little bits and bobs add up. More yummy money for us. What I like about my dad is that he’s never pretended. That quote – he uses it a lot. ‘First food, then morality.’ It gives me a little twinge to hear it every time, because it’s something Mum used to say as a joke. She did German at university, and it’s from a German playwright called Brecht. It tells you that it’s all very well having principles, but you need to be alive to put them into practice – so if you don’t get yourself and your family looked after first, you’re stuffed.

  Jon’s always been scathing as fuck about the people who pretended to have a social conscience at university. They’d hang round outside the Union with placards and copies of Marxism Today. He tells me to watch out for them when I get there, because although the names will have changed, the attitudes will remain. They’ll have spiky hair, earrings and ripped jeans. Always ripped jeans, as if being left wing means you have to brag about how poor you are. They go home to Mummy and Daddy in the holidays and eat all the nice food that Mummy cooks, without having the smallest of urges to take it all down to the local Salvation Army hostel. Funny, that. And in two years they all have nice suits, nice cars and mobile phones. They’ll blush as red as Tony Blair’s tie whenever they think of their fingers being blackened by the Socialist Worker. There was a song out when I was in the lower school: something about a rich student girl who wanted to go and live with commoners, and didn’t realize they were all laughing at her, because she thought that it was cool to be poor. Says it all, really.